Russell Clark
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1905, d.1966
Volcanic Harbour
- 1960
- Oil on board
- Purchased, 1987
- 585 x 1200mm
- 87/58
- View on google maps
Tags: harbors, landscapes (representations), mountains, natural landscapes, peninsulas, stylization
Despite being an artist who constantly experimented with different media, styles and influences, Russell Clark achieved a distinctive visual language that was recognisably his own. Here, he applied a modified cubist-inspired modernism to the local landscape with overlapping parched volcanic forms representing a sweeping view down Te Whakaraupō / Lyttelton Harbour.
(Te Wheke, 2020)
Exhibition History
Picturing the Peninsula, 21 April - 22 July 2007
Banks Peninsula originally began life as an island formed over 11 million years ago by two massive volcanoes. The craters of these volcanoes now form Lyttelton and Akaroa Harbours. Today the long extinct volcanoes have been severely eroded by weather and are now only a fraction of their original size. Erosion in the Southern Alps led to the formation of the Canterbury Plains which slowly in-filled the ocean lying between the Mainland and the volcanoes which were joined roughly 20,000 years ago.
Russell Clark worked with a wide variety of mediums including painting, sculpture and graphic art. He lived in Christchurch from 1947 to his death in 1966 and in 1960 completed his small Volcanic Harbour series of paintings based on Lyttelton Harbour.